Mountain Springs

So,
Remember Gary Cooper, John Wayne, and in general the “Strong, silent type”?
If you ever really want to truly understand their popularity, try a real relationship with an actual woman (or two). It goes something like this:
There you are, barreling down kvish 6 at 140 kms with a girl that you are crazy about, and life is good. Then it gets even better: an errant ray of morning sunlight strikes her face at just the right angle to put an almost mystical glint on her hair, cheek and in her right eye.
You are fortunate enough to look over at just the right time to catch this magic, and say to her: “You look so beautiful in the morning sunlight.”

Silence.

You had sort of been expecting her to lean over and possibly lightly grab your right arm, perhaps even nuzzle her face against it. Oops, coming up at a slow driving truck, got to squeeze into the left lane and pass it.

Done. Back cruising in the left lane. You hear: “I know I’ll never be your type.”

Huh?

Puzzled you venture a “what?”.

“I’ll never be beautiful in your eyes”.

“Ah, the radio was a bit loud, I said you look very beautiful right now.”

“I heard you perfectly and I remember everything you said, even what you said last week.”

The brain is a marvelous thing and manages to allow you to do several non-related things at the same time, like driving and talking for example, by allocating mental resources in a continuous flow. Now it happens: millions of years of evolution force-feed you planned overdoses of adrenalin to fight the beasts. A cold sweat is the body’s answer to your current inability to grab a club and start bashing away. You know the demons are out there and you need all your mental resources ready but must keep a minimum for the road.

“What do you mean?”

“You said it takes the sunlight to make me look beautiful; it was probably blinding you as you looked over this way. Last week you said your first love had black silky hair and thin lips, and that is the look that always appeals to you…. I told you, every word of yours is precious and I remember them all. I live by them.”

“I was talking about how fetishes begin and used that as an example of how I can relate to fetishes even though I don’t really have any. And I don’t have a “type”. And you look beautiful to me all the time, it was just that this light reminded me of something artistic like a Rembrandt painting with that unique lighting.”

The air conditioner seems to be getting a boost from her as the car gets colder and colder.
She says: “Sure now you say that, but I know I’m not really your type. Why are you with me anyway?”

Everything is flying by so fast there isn’t time to reply to all of the implications so you pick one: “You said you live by my words, why don’t you listen to what I am telling you now?”
“Because I remember what you said before.”
“But that was in a totally different context…”
“You’ll never think I am beautiful….”

As this continues you notice you are coming up on another truck very fast and the prospect of not changing lanes or speed starts to look attractive…

Grace Kelly looked pretty good and some of that old movie lighting is gorgeous but Gary Cooper never tried to catch the poetry of a sunlit moment. She did her crazy Quaker stuff, he explained himself in a sentence or two and then silently let her ride away. Silently. And yes, she came back to stand by him, whacked the guy and presumably lived happily ever after. In silence. Probably sounded like Helen fucking Keller’s house before she learned to talk. Or like a medieval Cistercian Monastery: silence during the day and even quieter fornication and buggery at night. Word to the wise: no words…

Talk about car crashes….